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Post by RpR on Oct 1, 2017 20:53:08 GMT -5
Well how was it?
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Post by squashindonesia on Oct 2, 2017 2:22:36 GMT -5
Is the cross of cucurbita Maxima x cucurbita moschata always sterile? I am newbie
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Post by reed on Oct 2, 2017 7:04:36 GMT -5
We haven't sampled it yet. I left it for a few more days and it developed gold / yellow bumps on top. It's currently laying on the floor under the kitchen table. I'm kinda new to squash other than summer types and acorn and butternut so not sure how to use it but we'll figure it out. I'm hoping it might be good turned into a pie. |
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Post by reed on Oct 9, 2017 10:26:32 GMT -5
Well the mospermia turned out to be the squash version of tofu. Not good, not bad, pale yellow inside, maybe if cooked with something else it would absorb some flavor. Now these are very interesting from Joseph Lofthouse (Landrace Maxima Small). We haven't tried them yet but what is extremely interesting is that while ALL other squash vines have met their demise to some kind of moldy mildew disease the one here on the left has very little of it and the yellow one virtually none. The yellow one is also nicely productive, I think there are six on the vine. Three on the green one. They were also planted late and in some shade so over all I think they have great potential. Final judgement will of course be on a dinner plate.  |
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Post by philagardener on Oct 9, 2017 19:30:46 GMT -5
Pretty! The leaves on the mildew free plant look very glossy. Are they free of hairs that might trap mold spores on the leaf surfaces? That might be an easy phenotype to score at the seedling stage.
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Post by reed on Oct 10, 2017 2:55:20 GMT -5
It was wet when the photo was taken so that might be responsible for the glossy appearance. I'll look them over better when it dries out to see if the leaves are fuzzy or not. They sure stand out though, compared to the dead vines on all others.
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Post by RpR on Nov 7, 2017 0:03:39 GMT -5
Each of my gardens produced over a dozen Kabocha squash.
Best year of squash growing in twenty years, especially as I did little to them fertilizing or anti-disease, and they did very well.
A very, very tasty squash.
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Post by diane on Nov 7, 2017 15:50:58 GMT -5
Is the cross of cucurbita Maxima x cucurbita moschata always sterile? I haven't hybridized squash yet, but make notes whenever I read something about it. I have no information about successful crosses of maxima and moschata. Here are some of my notes, but I didn't write the source: interspecies hybrids almost always male sterile so need pollen from one of the parents argyrosperma x moschata OK, but not the reverse pepo x moschata possible moschata x pepo - F1 is partially fertile, but F2 is infertile Hayase in Japan found timing and temperature were important: he collected pepo pollen at 10 pm and kept it at 10 C, then the next morning at 7 am he used it to pollinate moschata |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 7, 2017 19:50:14 GMT -5
Is the cross of cucurbita Maxima x cucurbita moschata always sterile? The variety that I have grown Tetsukabuto F1 is male sterile (the male flowers shrivel up before opening). Some of the second generation plants were male sterile, and some of them produced normal looking flowers. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 7, 2017 23:35:52 GMT -5
William: I make arrangements with local chefs and restaurants. I let them use the flesh of the squash -- if they return the seeds of each fruit separately with a piece of the fruit so that I can fry it up for a taste. I used to try to eat every squash at home. That was too much for my family, even though we love squash. So then I opened squash, saved the seeds, and threw the flesh into the garden. That was too much for my hardscrabble upbringing. So now, I have the best of both worlds. A chef will open dozens of fruits at a time, and use the flesh, and give me the seeds. I fry up each sample, and save seeds from the ones I like. The bottom tray contains the seeds of 16 maxima squash that a chef opened for me. He opened 2 more that didn't pass the taste test, and 2 that were so good they ended up being saved separate.  That crate of buttercups at the back is going to a chef tomorrow. The crate of buttercups at the front is the emergency backup archive, that contains one each of the different phenotypes in my buttercup, and a ficifolia. The crate to the left were grown by a collaborator in the valley. They are for me to taste, for possible inclusion in the landrace in a year or two. The big kabochas are up for grabs by anyone that will give the seeds back to me. The middle of the pile crate is G2:Tetsukabuto a maxima/moschata cross. I'm intending to just cut them open and save seeds without tasting them. 
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Post by steev on Nov 8, 2017 0:22:15 GMT -5
Having no chef contacts these days (though I'll get back in touch with Justin, chef at Clif-Bars lunchroom in Berkeley, when I ramp up my squash production, the drought being over?); I'm thinking of a pig; salume or prosciutto to wrap around melon bites will be lovely; I think a steer would also eat squash; aside from beef in general, I love bresaola; having few to feed, storeable meat products are a concern, if I raise critters; I don't want to just stuff a freezer, can, jerk, or dehydrate.
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Post by gilbert on Nov 8, 2017 12:31:46 GMT -5
I had high hopes for the mospermia squash seeds Joseph sent me. However, out of 20 plants, only one set a fruit, and that one didn't ripen; it was still soft and only a few inches long when the frost came. And then some participants tilled everything up, so even if it had viable seeds in it I didn't get any. It was a really bad year; Joseph's moschatas were a failure; I got three half ripe squash out of 30 plants. However, his maxima plants gave me a wheelbarrow load of squash, while my mix of store bought maximas didn't sent anything.
I planted Joseph's pepo squash, warty crooknecks, next to a PM straight-neck squash from High Mowing Seeds. The PM squash is powdery mildew resistant, which means it bears squash long after my other varieties have given up; however, it is a slow starter in the spring and rather feeble overall. Joseph's are very vigorous, and were the last squash to wilt in my garden due to water stress; however, they succumbed to mildew. I hope that the cross will be useful. I started both varieties under wall-o-water covers, so I think they were done setting squash before other pepo varieties in the area (pumpkins and zucchini) were shedding pollen.
How would it be best to evaluate this cross? If I wait till the mildew usually shows up and select for that, all the fruits will already be set for the year. If I evaluate based on vigor, the plants I keep might be mildew susceptible. And I should probably sample each plant for eating quality in the immature stage too, just in case the pumpkin genetics got in. To make things worse, there will probably be pumpkins in close proximity again, so I'll have to start the seed plants early and harvest later fruits for eating.
Joseph, since you are fond of mixing up varieties, why didn't you mix up zucchini and yellow squash? Or do you?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 8, 2017 14:50:01 GMT -5
gilbert: Thanks for the grow report. I have yet to receive a glowing grow report about Mospermia... Lots of failures though. Good to know. I have kept yellow crookneck and zucchini separate. That is for nostalgic and marketing reasons. It's hard to sell a different looking summer squash, and I like my yellow crooknecks to look exactly like a yellow crookneck because they bring back incredibly fond memories from my childhood. I cull to keep each true to type. I might have allowed a dozen varieties of crookneck to promiscuously pollinate, but only with other yellow crookneck. I keep the zucchini true to type of long/skinny, even if I allow skin color and leaf shape to vary. If you go through a squash patch, and kill all the plants that you don't like, and pick all the fruits, then whatever new fruits are produced will be pollinated by plants that you like (or by the neighbors...) I observe about a 5% cross pollination rate on squash varieties growing 100 feet apart, and don't worry about pollination by squash that are further away. It's really easy to observe off types in squash, even when the fruits are only a couple days old.
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Post by gilbert on Nov 8, 2017 15:13:36 GMT -5
The problem is that I've already got such a short season . . . also that my isolation method depends on starting my seed saving population very early. I suppose I could start very early to allow for culling, and found a different plot without the nearby pumpkins, this would work.
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Post by RpR on Nov 9, 2017 12:33:31 GMT -5
I may have asked this before so forgive me if I did
I used to love, as did many people I knew, acorn squash.
The ones I planted for a few years now and not just my garden, just seem to no longer have the flavor or texture they once did.
They are blah and to often stringy.
I would think it was me but others who grew them have had similar opinions.
Any good reason?
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